U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 96-260

Wallace: My name is Robert Earl Wallace, and I was born July 16, 1916 on Manhattan Island in New York. I like to tell people that cows and horses grazed on Manhattan Island in New York City near where I spent the first six years of my life. It was only a small meadow, but we did pass it on our walks from our apartment on northern Manhattan Island. Also there was an empty lot across from the apartment where rocks were sticking out--probably Manhattan schist. Older kids roasted potatoes in rocky crannies on this empty lot, and at age four or five I was impressed.

My parents, my mother in particular, would take us on picnics. We would walk over to the Dyckman Street Ferry, which we took across from Manhattan to New Jersey, and go picnicking on the west shore of the Hudson River, in the shadow of the Palisades of New Jersey. The Palisades are a geologic structure--the Palisades sill--as I found out decades later. That was exotic country for me. I am sure that was the start of my life-long love of exploration, nature and science.

I have a sister a year-and-a-half older--Harriet E. Wallace--who got interested in geology at Northwestern. She decided to major in it, mainly in economic geology and mineralogy. When we were teenagers, her interests led us to do some mineral collecting, zeolites and such, at Patterson, New Jersey, in the Palisade sill along the Hudson River, and exotic minerals at the famous site at Franklin Furnace, N.J. and elsewhere. That was my first taste of geology.

Harriet went on to work as an office geologist with a major chemical company in New York. She married another geologist, William C. Smith, who worked for many years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and with the Illinois Geological Survey. She eventually became head of the great geology library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was given a full professorship. During those years, she became a major force in starting the Geosciences Information Society and was elected its second President.

Scott: Say something more about your parents and about your grandparents.

Wallace: That is certainly part of the beginning. My father, Clarence Earl Wallace, was born near Van Wert, Ohio. He went off to the Garrett Biblical School at Northwestern University to become a minister. However after he graduated he had sufficient training to go back to Van Wert and teach physics in high school.

My mother, Harriet Wheeler, was born in Plano, Illinois, and grew up in the Oak Park area. She also went to Northwestern where she met my father. On my mothers side of the family, there were two aunts and a great uncle who went to Northwestern. My maternal grandmother, Clara Ryon, was born in California. In 1860 her parents decided to go west with the big westward movement. At the time, my great-grandmother was pregnant with my grandmother, who was born in Woodland, California, in August 20, 1860, just five days after the folks arrived there in a covered wagon. Her father, Hiram Ryon, practiced law there.

My grandmother used to say that her folks thought the three or four months of traveling across country in the covered wagon in 1860 was one of the most wonderful times of their lives. They just went along the trail, which by then was well marked, and traveled with other family members in four or five wagons. One uncle was only 1-1/2 years old. They had a wonderful trip for the most part, but at one point they ran across some Indians who wanted to buy the infant. The folks became worried then and joined a bigger wagon train for a while. So, you see, we have something of a family history connection with California from way back.

When my grandmother was seven, the family decided to move back to Illinois. They went by boat and crossed possibly through Nicaragua to the Gulf of Mexico, where they took lighters out to ocean-going vessels. Then they traveled by ship to New York, and back to Illinois by train. My grandmother later married John C. Wheeler, my maternal grandfather. I like to think about that early family history, and identify with it.

Scott: Yes, you have a long-standing family connection with California and the covered wagon era.

Wallace: Now back to my more immediate family background in Illinois and Ohio. As I said, several on my mother's side, including my mother, went to Northwestern. My father was the only Wallace who went to Northwestern. My mother and father were really great parents. They had a sense of adventure. One of my mother's frequent comments was, "You can become anything you want to be." So my sister and I did. And, with my mother's encouragement, my father had the sense of adventure to go to New York and become an art teacher. My mother--born Harriet Wheeler had a lot of artistic talent. She had majored in biology at Northwestern, and we still have beautiful lab drawings she did of frogs, salamanders and such. Her mother, the Clara Ryon Wheeler whom I have already mentioned, also produced several beautiful pencil drawings of flowers.

Several of my father's early paintings suggest that he was not actually very artistic, but he had a lot of conviction and drive, and did become a very successful commercial artist and teacher. He wrote a book titled "Commercial Art" for McGraw-Hill which became a much-used high school textbook then was re-published for the military, which had a big publishing spree in the middle of World War II, distributing books to the armed forces. My father was also on the boards of directors of various art institutions and societies. For someone who was not basically artistic, he did very well.

My parents were both teachers. My father taught art in high schools in New York City, and my mother taught elementary school. After we children reached a certain age, in the seventh and eighth grade in Demarest, New Jersey, my mother actually became my teacher. The family had moved from Manhattan Island to New Jersey, first to the little town of Cresskill, and then to Demarest in 1932, which was my official home address until I finished graduate school.

Scott: Say a word or two more about some of those early-day experiences, and especially about some of your own developing interests? You mentioned picnicking with your mother and sister and collecting rocks.

Wallace: I remember walks with my mother, looking at bugs, flowers and the like. I found such things very exciting. My early life seemed to be dominated by a series of what I sometimes call "obsessions"--when I would be totally fascinated by something. This capacity for intense motivation has been one of the most precious things in my life.

Scott: With that kind of fascination with what you were doing, or what you wanted to do, you did not have to push yourself.

Wallace: No, I certainly did not, at least not for the subject of the "obsession" of the moment, although my other chores did suffer at times. I liked to go to bed at night thinking, "Tomorrow I will do this, and this, and this, and won't that be exciting?" As I have gotten older, I have tended to lose some of that desire or drive. Perhaps it is a matter of waning energy levels.

Scott: Say more about some of those obsessions. What were some of those major interests that fascinated you?

Wallace: When I was about age eight or nine, we had moved to northern New Jersey, across from New York City, and bird life captured my attention. There were all sorts of swamplands and deciduous forest--mini-wilderness--in New Jersey in those days. There were beautiful glacially-formed hills and the rocky Palisades. It was wonderful country for a kid. In the little towns of Cresskill and Demarest I could be out in the wilderness in minutes, looking at birds. I remember springtime so well--in May--being absolutely thrilled with the migration of the warblers. All the eastern deciduous forests have this marvelous annual event, the northward migration of the warblers. Many of the birds are in vivid colors at that time of the year, and myriad songs filled our yard and the surrounding woodlands.

I was fascinated by the birds, and we put up many feeders for them. I remember being so excited when the first birds visited the feeder that I used a whole pack of my father's expensive camera film. I did not get one good picture, but at the time I thought I was getting a rare photo every time I snapped. My father had built a darkroom in our home in Demarest, and before that he and I had developed pictures in a closet. I grew up with photography, mixing chemicals for the developer and hypo and so on. Photography has been a theme all through my life, but in a secondary way--mostly as a tool.

Then a year or so after getting interested in birds, I saw a book on trick and fancy roping, and rope-spinning a la Will Rogers. For a time all I could think about was spinning ropes. I wanted to be a cowboy, but could not have a horse, so that desire took another form: "Let's learn how to spin ropes." Using clothes-line rope, I taught myself by trial and error, with that one simple little book. My ability developed, and by high school, when the big rodeos came to Madison Square Garden, I was very excited.

I don't know how my father did it, but somehow he arranged for me to have an hour with the world's champion trick roper, Chet Byers. I demonstrated what I could do for this famous roper, and he gave me pointers. I got some of his special ropes, and--to brag--I got to be rather good at rope-spinning. While I was at Northwestern, I was invited to one of Chicago's fancy nightclubs as a floor show item.

Scott: By that time you would have been about high school age, I guess. Say something about high school and your interests there.

Wallace: I went to high school at Tenafly, New Jersey. (Tenafly is an old Dutch name, as is Cresskill.) The area was called the Northern Valley with a newspaper called The Northern Valley Tribune. In high school I had the usual college-prep courses, although I was always very heavy into science. I loved biology, zoology, and physics--you name the science and I loved it--but it was not the same with history or language.

My sister's interest in mineral collecting got me into geology before I finished high school. Through high school, however, I had thought of going into ornithology. With that in mind, in my senior year I went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, walked into the ornithology department, and asked if there was anybody I could talk to about becoming an ornithologist. I was admitted to the office of a Dr. Zimmerman. Dr. Zimmerman told me that, for earning a living, if I had any other interests, I had better pursue one of those, and consider ornithology a hobby. I said, "Yes sir."

Scott: I guess paying jobs in ornithology were not plentiful.

Wallace: You are right. While talking about hobbies, I cannot ignore ham radio. My father introduced me to radio-building--he had built several in the 1920s. I got my ham radio license at age 15. I had to go into New York City to take my written, theoretical test, the code test and so on. I had learned the code with a key made out of a hack-saw blade. Radio really became a passion. By the time I was getting out of high school I thought I would major in electronics and physics. At Northwestern, I took physics and enjoyed it. I took zoology and enjoyed that. These were both taken with the idea of following up on ornithology, or electronics and radio. Photographing birds became a passion, and that required invention and building remotely controlled electromagnetic shutter trips--winding the electromagnetic elements from scratch. With such gadgets I did get some good photos. My very first publication, in fact, was a bird photo published in a magazine for youngsters.

Wallace: I went to Northwestern in 1934, having taken one extra year of high school. My family could not afford to put my sister and me into college at the same time. Also, I was sort of immature, so they thought an extra year in high school would be good, and it was an excellent idea. I had skipped a grade somewhere along the way, and thus finished college at 22, which was about when others were completing college back then.

Northwestern, our "family's" university, was a marvelous school. By the sophomore year, however, I could not make up my mind on a major subject. I knew something about minerals by then, and also I had a very good geology teacher at the beginning, Dr. C. H. Behre. I thought, "I'll procrastinate in deciding on a major--meanwhile I'll major in geology. That way I can go into physics through geophysics, or into biology through paleontology." I liked the out-of-doors--my favorite times were wandering the hills. The idea of working out-of-doors turned the trick in terms of majoring in geology, which also seemed to provide the possibility of a variety of kinds of careers in science.

The geology department at Northwestern had, and I understand still has, a sense of "family." The professors paid close attention to the students and took a personal interest in them. This was very good for me. I was not an extrovert, but was a loner type, and timid. I was out looking at birds, or into ham radio, or almost anything but socializing. So it was a fine atmosphere for me. Two geology professors, Charles Behre and Art Howland, were wonderful role models.

At Northwestern I got the basics in geology, structural geology, mineralogy, petrography, paleontology, and a course in weather and climate--a nicely rounded background. I did, however, get one very bad piece of advice there. I had a paleontologist as an adviser, and in my senior year we reviewed the courses I had taken. I had taken math through calculus, and my advisor told me I did not need to take more math to graduate. He discouraged me from taking more math, and that was a mistake. I should have followed up on math when it was easy for me and I liked it. Once one breaks the sequence in math, it is hard to recapture. So I never really progressed in math as I would have liked to.

In the summer of 1937, between my junior and senior year, I got a job with Al Hoagland, a consulting geologist in Val d'Or Quebec and a graduate of Northwestern. He needed a field assistant, and promised to pay my way up there and back, and to give me some experience. It was a summer when everything I touched was new, and, as you know, a youngster is like a sponge. I had never used a transit or a dipmeter before. I set the transit up and figured out from basic trigonometry what I should do. That experience was so very valuable.

In my senior year I applied to various graduate schools. When I started college, I had no idea that I would go on to graduate school, but I guess my professors began talking up things like that, so I applied at Michigan, Minnesota, and Caltech. It seems that there was a close association between the faculties at Northwestern and Caltech. For a period of ten or fifteen years they had traded students back and forth. A number of my friends started at Caltech and then went to Northwestern, and a number of us started at Northwestern and then went to Caltech.

I did not know all this when I applied. A very fine fellowship was offered by Caltech first, although I was shooting for Minnesota. One day, my professor, Jack Stark, asked me if I had heard from Caltech, and I said, "Yes, I got an offer." "Did you reply and accept?" he asked. I said, "No." He said, "Well, for Christ's sake accept the offer!" I had heard how tough it was at Caltech, and I thought that probably I couldn't hack it there. But I said, "Yes sir, I'll accept."

Wallace: A few months later I was on my way to Caltech, on the Southern Pacific.

Scott: When did you go to California and to Caltech?

Wallace: I finished at Northwestern in 1938 and went on to Caltech for four years. At the end of the Southern Pacific train trip west, I landed at South Pasadena in what seemed to me to be absolute paradise. Palm trees were swaying, Scrub Jays calling, and the skies were beautifully clear. A high-school friend met me, and we stopped at a stand to have all the orange juice we could drink for ten cents. It was really superb.

I moved into Arms and Mudd, the brand-new buildings for the earth sciences on the Caltech campus. Dick Jahns was my next-door neighbor. In later years his name became well-known in California, and nationally, as Dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford. I consider Dick just about the smartest person I ever knew. And what a constant flow of jokes, including bawdy and practical, he brought to every occasion. Caltech provided a superb experience.

After a couple of years I got a master's degree and took preliminary orals, an exam given to see whether one would be permitted to go ahead for a Ph.D, which was a separate program from the master's. Caltech did not make it a continuum as some schools do. Some friends, who I knew to be much smarter than I, had taken their preliminary orals ahead of me and failed. So when I came up for my orals a few weeks later, I thought, "This is the end of the road." Strangely, however, I passed.

I was pleased, of course, that I got through, and went on for the Ph.D. at Caltech. I started in 1938, and by the end of 1941 the nation was involved in World War II. But even before that the draft board was breathing down our necks. Ian Campbell, then a professor at Caltech, and later well-known here in California as head of the California Division of Mines and Geology, and a lot of other things, was a member of the draft board. I believe he helped protect some of the students at Caltech until they could get their Ph.Ds.

Wallace: I thought Caltech had a wonderful program. They had an interesting policy in those days. For the Ph.D., students were required to write two theses in very different fields. The program was divided into different areas: vertebrate paleontology, invertebrate paleontology, structural geology, mineral deposits, geophysics, and petrography--something like that. So I chose structural geology and vertebrate paleontology.

A bunch of us chose vertebrate paleontology as a major or minor, I believe, primarily because in those days Chester Stock had research funds. These funds came from the Carnegie Institution of Washington; its president at the time, John C. Merriam, was a paleontologist. There was no National Science Foundation (NSF), there was no research funding from anywhere, except perhaps a little from oil companies. Now, when there are many sources of funds that students can tap into, it is hard to comprehend what a lean and difficult time it was back then.

Many students who were aimed at fields far from paleontology took degrees in vertebrate paleontology. For example, Paul Henshaw, who was going into economic geology and mineral resource work, and later became president of Homestake Mining Co., wrote his major Ph.D. thesis in vertebrate paleontology. Also two of my good friends, Bob Hoy and Art Drescher, who also became economic geologists, and worked for mining companies, did a lot of work in vertebrate paleontology.

Scott: Say something about your professors at Caltech.

Wallace: I think educational methods and teaching styles are so very, very important. I hear people objecting that universities are into research and do not do teaching. That kind of comment just appalls me, because some of the best teaching techniques are in the research mode, where students participate in discovery, questioning, analyzing and thinking.

The whole thought process is so much more active and effective than just acting like a sponge trying to soak up what the professor says and then spewing it out on an exam. In my estimation the lecturing-and-regurgitation mode is scarcely teaching, but many consider it to be. Participation is critical--participatory education, so that the student is seeking answers with a professor, doubting things and doing independent thinking. That is the way to learn how to think, and how to study anything that comes along in life.

Scott: You are describing academia at its best, which can be very good indeed. It is the kind of effective teaching that should be emphasized and encouraged.

Wallace: Yes. In illustrating my own good experiences with teaching and research, I will compare and contrast the teaching styles of four people, Chester Stock, Ian Campbell, Horace Fraser, and John Peter Buwalda.

Chester Stock

Wallace: Chester Stock, who was very popular as a professor in vertebrate paleontology, specialized in a several-hour lab given twice a week, but I cannot remember that he lectured at all. He would wander into the lab, where he and we students would get to talking about anything from philosophy to vertebrate paleo. I remember that one of the most significant studies in my life was working in vertebrate paleontology with the little ankle bone called the cuboid. Over a period of weeks we compared the cuboid bones of the elephant, the shrew, the dire wolf, and human beings. Stock visited with us in the process--but did not lecture at us.

The cuboid stuck in my mind, because after going through that exercise, I never again could consider myself as anything but one of these critters. It proved to me that I definitely was related to them. It was such a simple little bone. All cuboids looked the same, whether of an elephant or a shrew or a human. To me that was a very important philosophical link with the rest of the animal world. Anyway, Chester Stock was certainly the epitome of participatory education--participating, questioning, and inventing new ideas.

Ian Campbell

Wallace: Ian Campbell was a very different person and had a very different teaching technique. He was people-oriented, and his style was to relate personally to individuals. He did that so well that many of his students named their sons Ian. One could not help but want to emulate this scholar--such a warm, capable person. He became president of such prestigious organizations as the Geologic Society of America, the Society of Economic Geologists, and the Mineralogical Society of America. I do not particularly remember the learning processes in his classes, although I took several under him, and then became a lab assistant for him in one of his classes.

Horace Fraser

Wallace: Next I'll mention Horace Fraser, a Canadian who taught ore mineralogy. He was a taskmaster, driving us to work hard, and to memorize chemical compositions of hundreds of minerals. Those are three very different styles of teaching, and all are effective. It was marvelous to have those three styles represented so clearly in my background by those three Caltech professors.

Scott: Those are three very different styles, but evidently they all worked quite well.

Wallace: They all worked--each filled in a niche between the others.

John Peter Buwalda: A Contrast

Wallace: Another teacher I shall describe was Dr. John Peter Buwalda, who became my Ph.D. thesis advisor--that is, the thesis on the San Andreas fault. Chester Stock was my adviser on the vertebrate paleontology thesis. Dr. Buwalda was revered but also feared, I believe. In class he never let the students know his thoughts about any geologic theory or situation. His teaching technique was to let students prepare reports on various subjects, then have them report their findings to the rest of the class. He remained the Sphinx. That technique has worked well for some professors, but we all wished that we could have some exchange with this famous geologist. I had very few conversations with him, even about progress on my thesis.

After the war, when I was offered the teaching position at Washington State College, I still did not have my degree in hand. Although I had completed everything and had passed my defense-of-thesis exam, Dr. Buwalda had procrastinated in taking the necessary papers to the administrative office. Not knowing how to handle this touchy situation, I asked Ian Campbell to intercede. In about 10 days I had my sheepskin in hand and was acceptable to Washington State College.

Scott: Before you leave Caltech, talk a little about some of the other things you experienced along the way. I know for example that you witnessed at least one of the famous debates between Bailey Willis of Stanford and Andrew Lawson of Berkeley.

A Trip to Stanford

Wallace: In the spring of 1939 a group of us drove up to Stanford for a meeting of the Cordilleran or western section of the Geological Society of America. It was wonderful to go up there in the spring when all the fruit trees were in bloom. But I guess the highlight was hearing Bailey Willis and Andy Lawson argue. It was traditional that they would disagree and have a shouting match at any of these meetings. They performed to our satisfaction, and it is something to remember when I read the multitudinous works of both those great scientists.

Scott: Yes, their disagreements are now legendary.

Two Fossil Finds

Wallace: Another memorable experience was finding some fossils, aided by Chester Stock. He had access to some funds from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which could be used to support field work. It was the only such money in town. So when any of us wanted to have a weekend out in the hills, Stock could pay for our food and our gasoline, and we could use a department car.

With two other friends--Bob Hoy and Art Drescher, whom I have previously mentioned--I went on one trip to the Panoche Hills west of Fresno. We were looking for fossils of aquatic vertebrates, big reptiles, sea-serpent-type critters. We knew the formations where these creatures should be found, and walked the barren hills where those formations cropped out. Our search proved very successful. I think it was Art Drescher who made the first find--the nose of a Mosasaur sticking out of the ground. We hiked back over the hills to the truck to get shovels and equipment. Then while on the way back to the Mosasaur I saw three vertebrae (neck bones) of a Plesiosaur sticking out of the ground. They looked like a small log, protruding about eight or ten inches out of the bare, shaley ground. Here we had two major fossil finds of big creatures in that one weekend. What excitement!

We all had some previous experience in how to treat fossil finds, so we dug very carefully. You dig them out along the bedding, and finally get down with a toothbrush and small tools to clear details. We put burlap coated with plaster-of-paris over them to protect them, and ended up leaving both of them at the site for many months. Later we worked to excavate them and carry them back. Many others got involved in the later digging. Some of the digging went on in the summertime, and we had big cloth canopies over the site to protect the crew from the San Joaquin Valley sunshine.

It became a real "dig," and the Plesiosaur ended up on a wall at Caltech. It more or less covered a wall, 10 ft. by 15 ft. The skeleton was complete, except for the head. The bones I had found sticking up were neck bones. The head was gone, but all the rest was preserved, down through the tail, and including stomach material with bones of little critters the Plesiosaur had eaten. The Mosasaur turned out to be only the skull. It was perhaps four feet long and three feet wide, and had the typical big, double-hinged jaw. This was all very exciting. Good education!

Thesis Work on the San Andreas Fault

Wallace: By the time I completed my MS degree, I pretty well knew that my focus in geology would be in structural geology. Dr. Buwalda suggested that I try studying the San Andreas fault near Palmdale, California. I had had very little experience in real geologic mapping except in a class at Caltech and in Canada. I had missed a summer field camp at Northwestern University because of a bout with appendicitis. What stands out in my memory is that I really didn't know what I was doing, and I realize that is the status of many PhD efforts.

I remember sleeping under the stars in the desert along the San Andreas fault, listening to the coyotes howl, eating cold Campbell's beef stew of out a can, and entertaining myself playing my violin. I think the violin prompted extra efforts by the coyotes. I had just barely enough money to buy the canned soup at the one small store in Palmdale. Oh, that I had had enough to buy empty land at that time as Palmdale is now a major urban area.

For decades I felt embarrassed by my thesis work because I did not think it was sufficiently extensive. The draft board was breathing down my neck and I had no money for typing or other help with the thesis. But in recent years I have decided it made no difference, it, plus my minor thesis in vertebrate paleontology, got me a degree. Recently a friend pointed out that I probably was first to talk about slip rates on faults, something that came so naturally I never thought it unusual and never bothered to research the history.

It dawned on me recently that the 75 miles of displacement that I had suggested in the thesis was by far the most anyone had suggested to that date. It was one of very few papers on the San Andreas fault at the time, especially including geologic field evidence and geologic mapping. When I think of the thousands of papers about the fault that have been published since, I really had some gall to write some things I did. But I now find nothing too awfully bad about the thesis, and, I have gotten over my decades of embarrassment.

I completed the paper for publication after the war while working for the USGS in Washington, D. C. My wife, Trudy, typed it for me and I worked over the map for publication. The published paper, I know was used in several university classes on structural geology. One professor told me he liked it because it related geomorphology to faulting and tectonics. (Wallace, R.E., "Structure of a Portion of the San Andreas Rift in Southern California," Geological Society of America Bulletin, v.60, 1949, p.781-806.)

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